Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

So why is this story so hard to plot?

The heart-rending story of two people forced together by the politics and machinations about them! They do not care who sits on the throne, but they come to care for each other!

I conclude that they do not care about politics, but politics cares about them. Not in the sense that anyone thinks two lowly born characters have any say in how things turn out. (Until the end, hehehehehe. . . ) But in the sense that I will need at least the broad strokes of how things turn out.

I ripped off an idea from another story.

I was just looking back at that story and realizing how little of it came away, in part because it grew into the rest of the story ideas.   I look at it, and I know for a fact that the villains grew out the idea, but they were entirely different from the villains of the story he came from. 

Inspiration is strange.

Early in the story, the heroine thinks she should practice a spell for later use, in case she needs to prevent prying.

Later, I am desperately wondering how to set up a conversation she wants no one to listen to except the select group -- until I remember that earlier bit.

Also, it could be used for several points in between.

Sometimes inspiration is a matter of connecting the dots

At least the five villains entered.

Not the ones who refuse to villainize.  This is the other isekai tale, where  I thought there were five points where the villain acted.  

There are four subvillains, and the important thing was nailing down what they looked like.  

Not that the connecting parts are so clear.

Yes, there are always questions about "what goes here?" while writing, but this time, after I put a question in a crucial moment, the muse starts to babble about questions.

At the turning points, the heroine's victories will turn on her having correctly framed the questions. Victory turns on that.

Not, of course, that I have three questions (and answers) for the three crucial points. I may have to generate one. sigh

Oh you plot bunnies!

Two very different stories about a character who finds herself in another world.  The means by which they are moved differ, the situations they find themselves in differ, their powersets differ, and the reasons they have powers differ.  Their enemies differ, and so does the conflict.

This probably means they should have different reactions to arrival, perhaps all the more in that they do not glide over it as a machine that the readers will simply accept as not relevant to the plot.  (It is relevant in both cases, though -- the reasons differ.)

Both are going to have  metaphysical questions, though.  No matter how different I make them.

(And I don't even know if either one is a full story yet.)